Shock Mississippi Poll Finds Elvis Presley’s Democrat Cousin Four Points Away From Upset GOP Governor

A surprising new poll shows Mississippi Democrats are within arm’s reach of capturing the governor’s mansion in the 2023 gubernatorial election.

Democratic nominee Brandon Presley trails Republican incumbent Gov. Tate Reeves by just four points, 39% to 43%, in a Mississippi Today/Siena College poll released Thursday. The poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 4.6 percentage points, making the two declared candidates statistically equal 10 months after the November election.

“The Mississippians want someone new to take over as governor,” said Presley, a former mayor of Nettleton and a distant relative of rock icon Elvis Presley. “It’s clear that the people of Mississippi are ready to fire Tate Reeves.”

The poll also showed that 57% of voters would prefer “someone else” to Reeves in the November election, compared to 33% who support the governor. Reeves announced his candidacy for re-election last week, saying in an interview with Fox News that he intends to eliminate the state income tax if he wins a second term later this year.

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A significant number of Republican respondents, 33%, said they would prefer someone other than Reeves, as did a majority of independents (67%). Mississippi has an open primary system, which means voters do not need to register as Republicans to vote in the party’s primary, and independents often vote in Republican primaries. Reeves is supported by just 24% of independents in the poll. In addition, 29% of Democrats who responded said they planned to vote in the August 8 Republican primary, and 77% of Democratic voters polled say they want someone other than Reeves.

A spokesman for Reeves’ campaign downplayed the results of the poll.

“Every four years, Mississippi’s most liberal reporter, Bobby Harrison, tells his readers that Tate Reeves will lose based on some overcooked media poll, and every four years, Bobby Harrison is wrong. It’s just bait for his left.” readers,” the spokesperson said.

“Gov. Reeves will win re-election because the people of Mississippi approve of his track record of cutting income taxes, driving record investment in new jobs, raising teacher salaries, and achieving historic academic excellence in Mississippi schools,” the spokesman added.

There is good news for the governor in the poll. In addition to his narrow lead over Presley, Reeves has a strong lead over would-be Republican top contender Bill Waller Jr., a former Chief Justice of the Mississippi Supreme Court. Waller challenged Reeves in the 2019 gubernatorial primary, forcing Reeves into a runoff, but a 61% majority of registered voters said they didn’t know enough about him to have a say in the 2023 election.

In the hypothetical primary, Reeves leads Waller by 52% to 29% among the respondents.

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Public Service Commissioner and former Nettleton Mayor Brandon Presley is seeking the Democratic nomination to challenge Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves.
(Commissioner Brandon Presley, Facebook)

Reeves previously told Fox News he was confident he would win the primary as the most conservative candidate in the race.

“Well, I would tell you that Republican voters in the primary will vote conservative,” Reeves said. “I have experience in taxpayer refunds, job creation, the strongest economy in our state’s history, lowest unemployment an indicator in the history of our state when more people work in our state than at any time in the history of our state.

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Tate Reeves, Governor of Mississippi, speaks at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Dallas, Texas on August 5, 2022.
(Dylan Hollingsworth/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

“The level of our education is improving, our results in reading in the fourth grade and math in the fourth grade are increasing, the number of high school graduates is increasing,” he added. “We are fighting for our conservative values. We spearheaded the campaign to bring down Rowe. We are fighting for the protection of young girls in our state by saying that we will let boys play boys’ sports and… we will let girls play women’s sports. We fight against radical transgender people, especially among those under 18 years of age. And we will continue to do so.”

In the general election, Reeves has a significantly higher name ID than his Democratic rival Presley, who is relatively unknown despite his distant relationship to the “King of Rock and Roll”. Only 21% of Mississippi voters said they had a positive view of Brandon Presley, 15% had a negative view of him, and a majority of voters, 61%, said they didn’t know enough about him to form an opinion.

The last Democrat to be elected governor of Mississippi was Ronnie Musgrove, who won the election in 1999 and served one term there.

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The Mississippi Today/Siena College Research Institute Poll polled 821 registered voters from Jan. 8-12.